Cassie, her therapist, says it’s important for Rita to let go of the baggage she’s carried around for so long, so this is why they’ve assembled here at the foot of a hill an hour before sunup, before the honk and grind of the day has kicked in and scuffed its early shine. Cassie says it’s best to climb a mountain but there aren’t any within three hundred miles, so a hill will have to do. Cassie hands her a trash bag that’s technically empty but symbolically full of the stuff Rita’s been shoving into it for years: all the wont’s, shouldn’ts, can’ts, couldn’ts, and a bunch of you’ll nevers, all of it into the sack that she ties off at the top, starving the bad thoughts of oxygen until they die. Bad bad bad, they shout as they climb the hill. The glass is slick and wet so Rita must step carefully around a strew of used condoms and piles of dried dogshit and when she finally reaches the top, they let out a long ommmmm together, letting out the last of the bad. The sun is a chip on the horizon, a fluff of orange fur. When she tosses her trash in the dumpster at the top of the hill, Rita feels lighter. Like she’s climbed a mountain. Like the air up here is thin and rare.